New publication: Inclusive ethnographies

As a continuation of our previous study on representation and videography in linguistic landscape research, with Robert A. Troyer we published a paper on linguistic landscape oriented ethnographic work. This contribution is part of the special issue Methodology in Linguistic Landscape Research, edited by Robert Blackwood for Linguistic Landscape. 

We summarize the goal of this paper in the abstract as follows:

In ethnographically oriented linguistic landscape studies, social spaces are studied in co-operation with research participants, many times through mobile encounters such as walking. Talking, walking, photographing and video recording as well as writing the fieldwork diary are activities that result in the accumulation of heterogeneous, multimodal corpora. We analyze data from a Hungarian school ethnography project to reconstruct fieldwork encounters and analyze embodiment, the handling of devices (e.g. the photo camera) and verbal interaction in exploratory, participant-led walking tours. Our analysis shows that situated practices of embodied conduct and verbal interaction blur the boundaries between observation and observers, and thus LL research is not only about space- and place-making and sense-making routines, but the fieldwork encounters are also transformative and contribute to space- and place-making themselves. Our findings provide insight for ethnographic researchers and enrich the already robust qualitative and quantitative strategies employed in the field.

Enjoy!

Szabó, Tamás Péter & Robert A. Troyer 2017. Inclusive ethnographies. Beyond the binaries of observer and observed in linguistic landscape studies. Linguistic Landscape 3(3), 306–326. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/ll.17008.sza